The novels, romances, and memoirs of Alphonse Daudet (16 page)

sorrow, and a sort of surprise to find myself alone, within those four walls. I went from one room to another, slamming the doors to make a noise. Sometimes it seemed to me that some one was calling me to the shop, and I answered: " I am coming." When I entered my mother's room I always thought I was going to see her, knitting sadly in her armchair, near the window.

" To crown my misery, the cockroaches reappeared. Those horrible little bugs that we had had so much trouble in fighting with when we arrived at Lyons, had evidently heard of your departure, and attempted a fresh invasion, much more terrible than the first. In the beginning I tried to resist them. I spent my evenings in the kitchen, a candle in one hand, and my broom in the other, fighting like a lion, but always crying. As, unluckily, I was alone, it was in vain that I tried to be everywhere at once; it was no longer as in old Annou's time. Besides, the cockroaches came in greater numbers, I am sure that all there are in Lyons — and God knows how many there are in that old damp city! — had risen in a body to come and besiege our house. The kitchen was black with them, and I was obliged to let them take possession of it. Sometimes I looked at them in terror through the keyhole. There were hundreds of thousands of them. Perhaps you may think the disgusting creatures stopped there ! Oh, dear me ! You don't know that tribe of the North ! They invade everything. From the kitchen, in spite of doors and bolts, they crossed into the

dining-room in which I had my bed. I moved it to the shop, and then to the parlor. You laugh, but I should like to have seen you there !

" From room to room those cursed cockroaches drove me on, as far as our little old bedroom, at the end of the hall. There they gave me two or three days of respite ; then, one morning as I woke, I saw a hundred of them creeping noiselessly along my broom, while another division of the army approached my bed in good order. Deprived of my arms, assaulted in my last rampart, there was nothing for me to do but fly; and that is what I did. I abandoned the mattress, chair, and broom to the cockroaches, and fled from that horrible house in the Rue Lanterne, never to return there any more.

" I passed a few months more at Lyons, but they were very long, gloomy, and tearful. At the office, I was called nothing but Mary Magdalen. I went nowhere ; I had not a single friend. Your letters were my only distraction. Oh, dear Daniel, what a pretty way you have of saying things! I am sure you could write for the papers if you wished. It is not like me. Fancy that by dint of writing under dictation, I have managed to become about as intelligent as a sewing-machine. It is impossible for me to think of anything for myself My father had every reason to call me an ass. After all, it is not so bad to be an ass. Asses are good creatures, patient, strong, laborious, with kind hearts and strong backs. But let us return to my story.

" In all your letters you kept speaking to me about the rebuilding of the hearth, and, thanks to your eloquence, I had kindled like you with this great idea. Unfortunately, what I earned at Lyons was barely enough for me to live upon, so it was then the thought came to me of setting out for Paris. It seemed to me that there I should be better able to help my family, and should find the materials necessary for that famous reconstruction of ours. I decided upon my journey, only I took my precautions. I did not want to arrive in the streets of Paris like a plucked sparrow. It might do for you, Daniel; there are special graces attached to the condition of a good-looking fellow ; but for a great blubberer like me!

" So I went to ask for some letters of recommendation from our friend the Cure of Saint-Nizier, who is a very influential man in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. He gave me two letters, one for a Count, and the other for a Duke. I am well dressed, as you see ; the next thing I did was to find a tailor, who was willing, for the sake of my respectable appearance, to give me on credit a handsome black coat with the other appurtenances, waistcoat, trousers, etc. I put my letters of recommendation in my coat, and my coat in a napkin, and set off", with sixty francs in my pocket: thirty-five for my journey, and twenty-five to last until something should turn up.

" The day after my arrival in Paris, at seven o'clock in the morning, I was out in the streets, in a black coat and yellow gloves. For your guid-

ance, little Daniel, I mention that what I did was very ridiculous. At seven o'clock in the morning, in Paris, all the black coats are in bed or they ought to be. But I did not know this, and was very proud of wearing mine about in these great streets, and making my new boots ring on the pavement. I thought, too, that by going out early I should have a better chance of meeting with good luck. This was another mistake: good luck does not get up early in the morning at Paris.

" There I was, then, trotting about the Faubourg Saint-Germain with my letters of recommendation in my pocket.

" I went first to the Count in the Rue de Lille; and then to the Duke in the Rue Saint-Guillaume. At both places I found the servants busy washing the court-yards and polishing the copper bell-handles. When I told these rascals the Cure of Saint-Nizier had sent me to see their master, they laughed in my face, and flung buckets of water at my legs. What can you say, my dear boy? It was my own fault; only chiropodists go to visit such people at that hour. I accepted this as final.

" Such as I know you to be, I am sure that, in my place, you would never have dared to return to those houses and confront the jeering looks of that pack of lackeys. Well, I returned there with assurance that same day in the afternoon, and, as in the morning, I asked the servants to announce me to their masters, always as sent by the Cur6 of Saint-Nizier. I was rewarded for my courage: the two gentlemen were visible, and I was immedi-

ately admitted. I found two very different men and two very different welcomes. The Count in the Rue de Lille received me very coldly. His long, thin face, serious to solemnity, frightened me very much, and I could not find two words to say to him. He, on his part, scarcely spoke to me. He glanced at the Cur6 of Saint-Nizier's letter, put it in his pocket, asked me to leave him my address, and dismissed me with an icy gesture, saying: 'I shall bear you in mind; it is useless for you to come back here. If I find anything, I shall write you of it.'

" The devil take the man! I left the house chilled to the marrow-bone, but fortunately, I was received at the Rue Saint-Guillaume in a way to warm my heart. I found the Duke the most cheerful, full-blown, plump, and pleasing of men. How much he cared for his dear Cure of Saint-Nizier, and how certain everybody sent by him would be of a hearty welcome in the Rue Saint-Guillaume ! Oh, what a kind, good man the Duke was! We were friends at once. He offered me a pinch from his snuff-box, pulled the tip of my ear, and sent me away with a slap on the cheek and encouraging words.

" ' I undertake to look after you, and shall soon find what you want. In the meanwhile, come and see me as often as you like.'

" I went away delighted.

" For discretion's sake, I let two days pass without returning there, and it was not till the third day that I went as far as the Rue Saint-Guillaume.

A big fellow in blue and gold asked me my name. I answered in a consequential tone:

" ' Say that I am sent by the Cure of Saint-Nizier.'

" He came back in a moment.

" * The Duke is extremely busy. He begs you to excuse him, sir, and to step in another day.'

" You may imagine whether I excused the poor Duke!

" The next day I returned at the same hour. I found the same fellow in blue of the day before, perched iike a parrot on the steps. As soon as he saw me coming he said gravely:

" ' The Duke has gone out.'

"' Oh, very well,' I answered, ' I will come back again. Tell him, please, it is the person sent by the Cure of Saint-Nizier.'

" The next day I returned again, and also on the following days, but always with the same want of success. Once the Duke was taking a bath ; another time he was at mass; one day he was playing tennis, and on another he had somebody with him. Somebody with him! That was a way of expressing it! Was n't I somebody, too?

" In the end, I thought I was so ridiculous with my eternal * sent by the Cure of Saint-Nizier' that I dared no longer say who had sent me. But the big blue parrot on the steps would never let me go without saying with imperturbable gravity:

"' I think you are the gentleman sent by the Cure of Saint-Nizier.'

" This caused much laughter among the other

blue parrots lounging about in the court-yards. Pack of scamps ! If I could have given them a good cudgelling on my own account, and not on that of the Cure of Saint-Nizier i

" I had been about ten days in Paris when, one evening as I came back hanging my head from one of these visits to the Rue Saint-Guillaume,— I had sworn to keep on going there until they should shut the door in my face, — I found a little note waiting for me with my porter. Guess from whom. A note from the Count, my dear fellow, from the Count in the Rue de Lille, asking me to present myself, without delay, at the house of his friend the Marquis d'Hacqueville, who was looking for a secretary. Think what joy, and also what a lesson ! That cold, dry man, on whom I had counted so little, was just the person who took pains for me; whereas the other, who appeared so cordial, had let me dance attendance for a week upon his steps, exposed, together with the Cure of Saint-Nizier, to the insolent laughter of the blue-and-gold parrots. That is life, my dear boy; and in Paris a man learns it quickly.

" Without losing a moment I ran to the Marquis d'Hacqueville's. I found a little, brisk, thin old man, all nerves, alert and gay as a butterfly. You will see what a good type he is: an aristocratic face, pale and finely cut, hair absolutely straight, and only one eye, as the other was put out by a sword-thrust long ago. But the one he has left is so bright, so living, speaking, and penetrating, that you cannot call him one-eyed. He has two eyes in one, that's all.

" When I was ushered in before this strange, little old man, I began with some commonplaces suited to the circumstances, but he cut me short.

" ' No phrases,' said he. ' I don't like them. Let us come to facts. I have undertaken to write my memoirs, but, I regret to say, I have set rather too late about it, and have no time to lose, as I am beginning to grow old. I have calculated that, by using every moment, I need still three more years to finish my work. I am seventy years old, and my legs are shaky, but my head is as good as ever, so I may hope to last three years more and bring my memoirs to a satisfactory end. Only I have not a minute to spare, and that is what my secretary could not understand. That idiot — a very intelligent boy, though, on my word, with whom I was delighted — took it into his head to fall in love and to want to get married. So far so good, but lo and behold, the fellow comes this morning to ask for two days' vacation, to celebrate his wedding. Yes, indeed, two days' vacation! Not one moment.

" ' " But, sir," said he.

" ' "There is no dut, sir; if you go off for two days, you go for good and all."

" * " I must go, sir."

" * " Good-bye."

" * And now the rascal has gone. I depend upon you, my dear boy, to replace him. The conditions are these: The secretary comes to me at eight o'clock in the morning; he brings his lunch with him. 1 dictate until noon. At noon, the secre-

tary lunches alone, for I never lunch. After the secretary's lunch, which must be a short one, we set to work again. If I go out, the secretary goes with me, taking with him a pencil and paper. I keep on dictating; driving, walking, visiting, everywhere. In the evening the secretary dines with me. After dinner we read over what I have dictated during the day. At eight I go to bed, and the secretary is free until the next day. I give him a hundred francs a month, and his dinner. It is not Peru; but in three years, when the memoirs are finished, I will give a present, a royal present, on the honor of a d'Hacqueville. What I ask is that you be exact, that you do not marry, and that you know how to write quickly under dictation. Can you write under dictation?'

"' Oh, very well, sir! ' I answered with a strong desire to laugh.

"It was ludicrous, in fact, that fate should be determined to make me write under dictation all my life.

" ' Well, then, sit down there,' said the Marquis. ' Here is ink and paper. We will set to work at once. I am in Chapter XXIV., My quarrel with M. de VillHe. Write ! '

" And he immediately begins to dictate in a little voice like a grasshopper, hopping from one end of the room to the other.

" It is thus, Daniel, that I entered the service of this original person, who is an excellent man at the bottom, and so far we are well content with each other. Yesterday evening, when he learned

you were coming, he made me a present of this bottle of old wine for you. We have one like it served with our dinner every day, and this shows you whether we dine well or not. In the morning I carry my own lunch with me, and you would laugh to see me eating two sous' worth of Italian cheese in a delicate china plate, on an emblazoned table-cloth. The old gentleman arranged this so, not out of avarice, but in order to spare his elderly cook, M. Pilois, the trouble of preparing my lunch. On the whole, the life I am leading is not disagreeable. The memoirs of the Marquis are very instructive, and I am learning a quantity of details about M. Decazes, and M. Vill^le that cannot fail to be of service to me some day or other. At eight o'clock in the evening I am free. I go to a reading-room to see the newspapers, or to say how d'ye do to our friend Pierrotte. Do you remember Pierrotte? You know Pierrotte of the Cevennes, mamma's foster-brother. To-day, Pierrotte is no longer Pierrotte; he is M, Pierrotte, in capital letters. He has a handsome china shop in the Passage du Saumon; and, as he was very fond of our mother, I found his doors wide open to me. It was a great resource in the winter evenings; but now that you are here, I am not troubled about my evenings any more, nor you either, are you, dear old boy? Oh! Daniel, Daniel, I am so pleased ! How happy we are going to be!"